


Coffee at Midnight

by tonbosan



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Community: badbadbathhouse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonbosan/pseuds/tonbosan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dojima takes care of Adachi when he's drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> I wouldn't call this a songfic but it incorporates Blur lyrics (from "Coffee and TV").

Rain falls softly on the rusted iron steps that stretch up the twelve floors of the Hasegawa apartment complex, dropping in a barely audible tap-tap-tap on the cool metal pipes that spring out on either side and do their best to serve as banisters. They had been almost too hot to grip earlier, but the April sun had long stopped shining and all the moonlight does is provide the barest sense that there is something to hold you up if you need it.  
And Adachi needs it. He clings to the rusty, round banister as if he is ascending a particularly treacherous part of K2, pulling his way upward, hand over fisted hand, feet being rather less cooperative.  
“Shit!” His foot slides sideways just as he is lifting a hand to yank himself up another step, and he falls forward, chin coming into contact with the hard metal edge, and damn does that sting.  
“I told you to wait till I’d paid the driver.” Dojima, with more coordination, less inebriation, wrenches Adachi up by the sweat-stained armpits of his suit jacket and forces an arm around his shoulders. “You’re lucky you didn’t snap your neck.”  
“Lucky,” he echoes, “lucky me.”  
\---  
The door to Adachi’s apartment, last one on the left of the eleventh floor, is almost as rusty as the steps. An overstuffed sandwich of mail, mostly catalogues, pokes out of the knee-level slot. Adachi’s hand shakes as he digs in each of his pockets for the key and comes up empty. “Fuck, must’ve dropped it when I tripped. Fuck!”  
“Okay. I’ll check.” It has to be him. Adachi would probably break something if he tried climbing around down there in the dark again, all that liquor soaking in his guts.  
When Dojima returns with the key – it had fallen where Adachi had thought and is now damp and flecked with tiny rust particles – his partner is leaning over the railing to the left of the door. He dry-heaves, once, twice, and then spews a good quantity of his stomach contents down eleven floors. Dojima is glad it is so late. Surely at this hour there is no one at street level in danger of getting hit by high velocity vomit.  
\---  
The first thing Dojima notices (his first time inside Adachi’s apartment) is the electric piano. It is the only thing in the room not coated in a layer of dust. Adachi staggers forward onto a chair, a light blue plastic thing that would not be out of place at a food court or rooftop beer garden, and flops forward onto the small, round kitchen table. Dojima closes the door behind them.  
“I didn’t know you played.”  
Adachi lifts his head up from the table a centimeter. “Y’never asked.”  
Dojima tosses him a thin roll of paper towels he finds under the sink (Adachi breaks off a piece and wipes his mouth), then pours him a glass of water. His partner gulps it and sets the glass down on the dusty table with a thud.  
“How ‘bout some coffee, Dojima-san? How ‘bout, just this once, since I’m wrecked an’ all, how ‘bout making some for me?”  
All Adachi has is Nescafe. Dojima sighs audibly. It’s been a long, long week and they ended it the same way they’ve been ending every week for the past few months, at Soggy Shoes, the local izakaya, talking about stupid, unimportant things and drinking enough so that neither of them minds how inane and banal their conversations become. Anything’s better than listening to silence.  
Adachi had always been the one who’d held back. Besides getting Dojima’s coffee, mail and suits pressed, he usually kept himself just sober enough to call them a cab home. But not tonight. Tonight he decided to drink himself under the table, literally. Dojima almost had to sling him over his back getting him out of the bar. Watching him trying to make his way to the exit was like watching a fish attempting to clamber over a pile of sun-baked rocks.  
Dojima starts to prepare a pot of bad coffee. At work he’d noticed Adachi took his with a splash of milk and three sugars. Not finding any of either in plain sight, he spends some moments examining the contents of his partner’s cupboards and refrigerator. All he can find is a torn box of yellowing, melty cubes garnished with a couple of ant carcasses and a jar of the powdered stuff. This surprises Dojima a lot less than it perturbs him. There’s something sad, something wrong about not having even a single carton of milk in the house.  
Adachi pushes himself out of his seat and wanders unsteadily over to the keyboard. He turns it on and runs his hands up and down the keys, making it emit that surprised, slippery sound, then he sits down and starts to play. “Do you feel like a chain store,” he sings, voice a little harsh and off-key, but not awful, not bad-karaoke bad, just C grade lounge singer bad. “Practically floored,” he continues, “one of many zeroes, kicked around bored.”  
He keeps singing till the coffee’s ready and Dojima brings it over to him, wondering whether this is a good time to leave, or if he should stay, if for nothing else than to make sure the man doesn’t get in trouble for causing a disturbance to his fellow tenants. Dojima isn’t going to let him get kicked out of his apartment if he can help it. ‘Cause if that happened, Adachi would likely end up needing to stay at his place for a little while, and with his nephew arriving in less than a week, he’s all out of spare rooms.  
Adachi pauses his fingering in order to take the cup of cheap, terrible instant coffee Dojima is holding out to him. He takes a sip and says, “Ahhh,” drawing the sound out a second too long, like he’s practicing for a commercial audition, then continues singing, placing the cup aside and returning his fingers to the keys.  
Dojima puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s late, Adachi. People are trying to sleep.”  
“Huh. Two past midnight.” He laughs and stands up, a little less shakily than before he sat down. “Time flies when you’re fucked up.”  
\---  
They sit side by side on Adachi’s legless couch, a pale, unwashed gray thing that could have once been blue, and not for the first time since he followed his partner into his apartment, Dojima wonders why he is still here. He has a six-year-old at home to look after, he should get back, make sure she’s fallen asleep. But Nanako has always been a very self-reliant child, and he’s been gone half the night before. Plus, he knows better than anyone Inaba is a very safe town.  
Adachi, who has been flipping channels since he sat down, finally settles on a cooking program. Dojima pulls out a cigarette from the nearly-new pack in his pocket and lights up. One smoke and then I’ll leave, he thinks.  
“Got one for me?” Adachi, flashing a lopsided grin, pulls out an empty box of Marlboros from his front pocket and shakes it from side to side.  
Dojima pulls out another cigarette and hands it to him. Adachi promptly sticks it in his mouth. Before Dojima can reach for his lighter, Adachi grips his shoulders, leans forward and lights it himself.  
“What in the hell was that?” he almost asks. Instead, he says, “Thought you were trying to quit.”  
“So did I.”  
They sit back, watching a perky middle-aged woman demonstrating how to whip up Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki almost from scratch, and flick ash into Adachi’s now empty mug.  
\---  
Dojima does not notice that he has almost fallen asleep until he feels the cigarette, now nearly down to the butt, being pulled from his fingers. Adachi drops it, along with his own, into the cup.  
“Ever hear of the midnight channel?”  
“What?” Dojima is still half-asleep. He sits up and blinks a few times. The TV has been turned off and Adachi is staring at him with a half smile. He looks as tired as Dojima feels.  
“You know, that weird rumor that’s been going around town about an off-hours TV show. Supposedly it only comes on at midnight when it rains.”  
“I must have missed that one.”  
“They say you have to watch it alone-”  
“Oh, they do, do they?”  
“-and you’ll see your soulmate.”  
“Your soulmate.”  
His partner nods. Dojima often finds it hard to tell when Adachi’s being serious.  
“My soulmate’s been dead for a little over three years, Adachi.” He stands up. “I think you should get some sleep.”  
“I tried it out last night.” Adachi picks up the coffee cup and takes it over to the sink. “Know what I saw?”  
Dojima doesn’t reply, but moves a little closer to the front door. Adachi dumps the ashes and butts into the trash bag underneath the sink, runs some water into the cup and leaves it there.  
“Absolutely nothing.”  
Dojima wonders if this is where he might be supposed to laugh. “That’s not-”  
“Not even my own reflection.”  
Adachi walks over to the door and opens it for him. “It’s late, you have to go, I know.”  
Dojima takes a step toward the outside, stops and turns to face Adachi. “Why did you drink so much tonight? You usually hold back for me.”  
Adachi doesn’t meet his eyes. “So I could get you up here. Ask you to make me coffee, bum a cigarette. So I could say a bunch of stupid shit to you and not worry about, about-”  
Dojima stops him with a hand on his shoulder that’s gone as quick as it came. “Adachi, I…”  
“Yeah?” Now he’s looking at him.  
“Why…why don’t you come over for dinner sometime next week? You can meet my nephew.”  
“That sounds great, Dojima-san. It’ll be nice to see Nanako-chan again, too.”  
“I’ll, um, I’ll pick up one of those deluxe sushi platters from Junes. And we’ll have real coffee, none of that instant shit.”  
“Good stuff,” Adachi laughs and points a finger at him, “make sure they put lots of uni on that sucker.”  
Dojima nods, smiles. His partner smiles back, too broadly, a mess of teeth. Dojima hates that look, wonders if Adachi knows.  
“Well, goodnight.”  
“Goodnight, Dojima-san.”  
As the cool night breeze hits him, fresh oxygen filling his lungs, Dojima thinks about turning around and going back inside, making up some excuse about forgetting his wallet, knowing Adachi will see right through it and that neither of them will care. Then he thinks about Nanako, fast asleep (he hopes) in an empty house, likely having wondered where her father was this time while she prepared dinner, ate in front of the television and put herself to bed. Dojima sees himself opening the door to her room just a crack, looking in on her, making sure she’s warm enough, and that those beautiful eyes are closed.  
He has an idea what Adachi may have wanted, but he knows what Nanako needs. He starts the walk home.


End file.
